Friday, November 07, 2008

7: Release in 09, AERO And Mandatory Taskbars

7 In 09: I don’t know how many times I have told AT Companies in the last year that 7 was coming and it was coming fast. And I did gloat a little with some of my contacts in the biz last week as many of them were heading off to Microsoft HQ to discuss 7 accessibility. But, as I have said here on the blog, 7 is coming and like I thought it is coming in 2009 for at least the Business and Enterprise crowds. We may even see a Public Beta before the close of 08. Now I wish I had the nerve to make all those bets I was offered. I’d be cleaning up so well..

A New Bar To Task: 7 is going to support many new features from its sister product Microsoft Office. And like the Ribbon in Office 07, a great many of these changes won’t have a “Classic Mode”. The new Taskbar is one of these features that won’t be modifiable to what we know in the Blindness Community as 9x mode or XP mode. MS has some solid research for why they are going in this route and in this Ars article some of the reasons why are explained.